Life in the Ancient Near East

Book Review

If you could still find an economic history text, its first chapter
would likely tell the story of classical Greece and Italy. Not much
if anything would be said about what preceded those cultures in
socioeconomic terms, except possibly some speculation on how similar
or dissimilar earlier societies may have been to life in Athens
or Rome. Usually, our Western economic historians begin their reasoning
from primary materials of the classical tradition and work forward
in time to the present. So today, nearly the 21st century, we suffer
from a gap in our understanding.

Daniel Snell, in his newest book, Life in the Ancient Near East,
armed with a great deal of new information culled from an ever-expanding
body of ancient literature in a variety of languages, steps into that
gap, writing a comprehensive history on the social and economic conditions
of the Near East. His formal account starts in pre-history and carries
forward to Alexander the Great's conquest of the region in the fourth
century B.C.E. Since most of Snell's sources are textual, his de facto
starting point comes with Sumerian writing and concludes when the Greeks,
as political overlords, chose to write on parchment rather than clay tablets.
We still have the cuneiform etched tablets, while the papyri have rotted
to Middle Eastern dust.

By Ancient Near East, Snell means the areas of the modern countries of
Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Egypt. Today's newspaper
accounts would call it the Middle East; the terms Near East and Middle
East derive from a Eurocentric compass. West Asia would be proper, if
only anyone thought of it that way.

Mostly, Snell concentrates on Mesopotamia (the area of modern Iraq and
Eastern Syria between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers), no doubt because
the material is so abundant, rich and "economic" in nature.
A thoroughly accessible book for the nonscholar, Life in the Ancient
Near East is thought provoking. Virtually every page draws a scene
for the reader that then begs for comparison with the present. For instance,
Snell, a professor of history at the University of Oklahoma, tells us,
"There is the kernel of an economic theory produced under the Ur kings
but concerning the fall of Akkad. The supposed impiety of Naram-Sin was
felt to have led to high prices, and consequently piety in general was
felt to lead to low prices ... one could say righteous policies led to
low prices." These days, most economists think of inflation as a monetary
phenomenon.

Today we debate the government's role in the economy. Evidently, that
debate has traveled a very long path. In the period 2000-1600 B.C.E.,
according to Snell, "There were several efforts by various governments
to regulate the economy. Most of the efforts failed and most of them may
have been inspired not by analysis of economic social life but by a need
to be seen doing something about the economic crisis." Early attempts
at "spin" no doubt.

As we travel throughout the Ninth Federal Reserve District we are often
asked what can be done about the disappearance of the family farm. Our
response is to point out that demographers tell us this is a trend that
has been occurring for decades. It's not new. Turning to Life in
the Ancient Near East, it seems that trend is older yet and not
unique to any one place: "It appears that many times rich people bought
up the land held by the poor and destroyed the old agrarian order, replacing
it with their own farms," says Snell. "Social critics in Israel protested
against what they saw as a depersonalization and a rejection of old values
inherent in establishing new farms at the expense of old ones."

Snell discusses prices in each of his period chapters. He notes that at
some time before 1600 B.C.E. "... field prices everywhere seem low, only
three or four times the cost of grain produced in a year on the field."
Surprisingly, 4,000 years later that ratio roughly holds true on Midwest
farmlandon average.

Perhaps I've seen too many Charleton Heston movies to ever accept Snell's
myth-busting notion that, "It is much more likely that the pyramids were
part of government make-work projects that used idle peasants in the off-season
from agriculture in forced labor." A trip up the Nile as a tour of Ancient
New Deal projects?

The appendix is aptly titled: "Theories of Ancient Economies." Here Snell
explores the ideas and their importance of theorists including (and among
others) Karl Marx, Max Weber and the late Hungarian-American economist
Karl Polanyi. We get a brief glimpse of Snell's own philosophical compass
as his colleague Marc Van De Mieroop of Columbia University notes: "Snell
focuses primarily on trade rather than production or consumption. His
emphasis on economic exchange places him within the group of scholars
who consider it possible to study ancient economies with the tools neo-classical
economic theories use to study modern capitalist societies."

Each chapter of Life in the Ancient Near East is introduced
by a Michneresque vignette designed to humanize the otherwise nonfiction
tomb. It works, helping the reader to understand some aspect of life for
the real people who inhabited places like Babylon or Ur. It will no doubt
draw disapproving eyebrow gestures from the enforcers of academic conventions.
Not to worry, says Van De Mieroop, professor of Ancient Near Eastern history,
"Part of the fun of this scholarly discipline is that we can use our imagination
to make men and women long dead familiar to us." No words could possibly
resonate more perfectly with the editorial philosophy of The Region
magazine.*